The 1976 Tour de France was the 63rd edition of the Tour de France, one of cycling's Grand Tours. It took between 24 June and 18 July, with 22 stages covering a distance of . It was won by mountain specialist Lucien Van Impe in a battle with the previous winner Bernard Thévenet and Joop Zoetemelk. Zoetemelk won three high mountain stages including Alpe d'Huez and Puy-de-Dôme but this Tour became known for when the young directeur sportif of Van Impe, Cyrille Guimard, threatened to run Van Impe off the road with the Team Car if he didn't attack. Van Impe then attacked and won the Tour.
The revelation of the Tour however was Freddy Maertens, who in his first Tour won eight stages and the points classification, and led the general classification for ten days.
Five-time winner Eddy Merckx did not participate in the 1976 Tour de France because he was injured. 1975 winner Bernard Thévenet left the race in the 19th stage, but at that point it was already clear that Van Impe would win the race.
The mountains classification was won by Giancarlo Bellini with 170 points, only one point ahead of Lucien Van Impe. The young rider classification was won by Enrique Martínez Heredia. Heredia had already won the Tour de l'Avenir in 1974, but never broke through after this win.
Teams
The 1976 Tour started with 13 teams, each sent 10 cyclists, a total of 130.
The teams entering the race were:
Lejeune–BP
Pre-race favourites
Eddy Merckx, who already had won the Tour de France five times, had troubles to find his form in 1976, and suffered from saddle sores. He decided not to enter the 1976 Tour de France. The main favourite for the victory was now Joop Zoetemelk, who had never finished worse than fifth place in the Tour de France. The winner of the previous Tour, Bernard Thévenet, had a good spring season, winning the Dauphiné Libéré. The other former winner that was still racing, Luis Ocaña, had come second in the 1976 Vuelta a España, and was hoping to win again. Also reigning world champion Hennie Kuiper was considered a pre-race favourite.
Not considered a favorite by any means was the 40 year old 'eternal second' Raymond Poulidor, who was riding in his final Tour. While he finished a good distance behind Van Impe and Zoetemelk he surprised the rest of the field by finishing on the podium in 3rd place.
Route and stages
The 1976 Tour de France started on 24 June, and had two rest days, the first in Divonne-les-Bains the second at Le Barcarès. The 1976 Tour de France was divided into 22 stages and one prologue. Of the 22 stages, three were split stages: stages 5 and 22 were split into two half stages, and stage 18 was split into three smaller stages. The highest point of elevation in the race was at the summit of the Col du Tourmalet mountain pass on stage 15.
Stage 18a was originally scheduled to be 47 km longer, but after the 17th stage, the Tour direction saw that cyclists were exhausted, and shortened the stage.
+ Stage characteristics and winners Stage Date Course Distance Type Winner P 24 June Saint-Jean-de-Monts Individual time trial 1 25 June Saint-Jean-de-Monts to Angers Flat Stage 226 June Angers to Caen Flat Stage 327 June Le Touquet-Paris-Plage to Le Touquet-Paris-Plage Individual time trial 428 June Le Touquet-Paris-Plage to Bornem (Belgium) Flat Stage 5a29 June Leuven (Belgium) to Leuven (Belgium) Team time trial 5b Leuven (Belgium) to Verviers (Belgium) Half Stage 630 June Bastogne to Nancy Flat Stage 71 July Nancy to Mulhouse Hilly Stage 82 July Valentigney to Divonne-les-Bains Hilly Stage 3 July Divonne-les-Bains Rest day 94 July Divonne-les-Bains to Alpe d'Huez Mountain Stage 105 July Le Bourg-d'Oisans to Montgenèvre Mountain Stage 116 July Montgenèvre to Manosque Mountain Stage 7 July Le Barcarès Rest day 128 July Le Barcarès to Mountain Stage 139 July Font-Romeu-Odeillo-Via to Saint-Gaudens Mountain Stage Stage 13 was initially won by Régis Ovion, but he failed the doping test. The stage victory was then given to Teirlinck, who initially was second in that stage. 1410 July Saint-Gaudens to Saint-Lary-Soulan Mountain Stage 1511 July Saint-Lary-Soulan to Pau Mountain Stage 1612 July Pau to Fleurance Flat Stage 1713 July Fleurance to Auch Individual time trial 18a14 July Auch to Langon Half Stage 18b Langon to Lacanau Half Stage 18c Lacanau to Bordeaux Half Stage 1915 July Sainte-Foy-la-Grande to Tulle Flat Stage 2016 July Tulle to Puy-de-Dôme Mountain Stage 2117 July Montargis to Versailles Flat Stage 22a18 July Paris Individual time trial 22b Paris to Paris (Champs-Élysées) Half Stage Total
Race overview
The First Week The prologue was won by Freddy Maertens by 0:17 over the 2nd place rider. Between 1967 and 2012 most Tour's had a prologue, which is a short individual time trial less than 10 km, and this victory by Maertens was the largest margin of victory in Tour history. By comparison Merckx's largest prologue victory was only 0:11, yet is still the 3rd largest of all time. The directeur sportif for the Flandria team was Guillaume "Lomme" Driessens, a man who knew what it took to win the Tour de France having directed Merckx; and he was hesitant about allowing his young potential star starting a Tour this early in his career, but he was overridden by the team owner Pol Claeys and Maertens was added to the start list. He followed his prologue victory with another victory in stage 1, and during stage 2 he once again attempted to work his way to the front of the pack to fight for the win where he, along with everybody else, was beaten to the finish line by Giovanni Battaglin who took the victory by a full ten seconds. Stage 3 was another ITT, a 37 km ride around a beach resort along the English Channel known as Le Touquet Paris Plage. Again it was Maertens stealing all of the headlines handily beating the three favorites, as well as the time trial specialists by a considerable margin of over two minutes. In fact, the 2nd place rider at +1:37 behind was neither a favorite nor a specialist but rather his best friend within the peloton, and another young Belgian in Michel Pollentier, who shared the exact same birthday as Maertens, but was one year older. Another up and coming rider who performed well during the time trial was the Dutchman and defending World Champion Hennie Kuiper who finished 2:57 behind Maertens, but still fared better than Thévenet, Van Impe and Zoetemelk.
Stage 4 was won by Kuiper, who beat Eric Loder in a sprint as the two of them finished nine seconds ahead of Piero Gavazzi, Guy Sibille and Gerard Vianen. Stage 5A was a short team time trial won by the TI–Raleigh squad, which was beginning to evolve into one of the strongest time-trialling teams the Tour would ever know as there were no major changes to the overall situation. Stage 5B was yet another flat stage where the winner was able to gain about a ten-second advantage over the pursuing riders who had gotten ahead of the peloton. Guy Sibille had found a way to get up front again, but again he came up short, this time to Miguel-Maria Lasa who won the day. During stage 6 from Bastogne to Nancy, Italian rider Aldo Parecchini escaped and won on a solo breakaway where he finished four and a half minutes ahead of the main field. Stage 7 was an intermediate hilly stage through the Vosges including the Grand Ballon that went from Bastogne to Mulhouse and ended with a bunch sprint velodrome finish where Piero Gavazzi and Jacques Esclassan were beaten to the line by Maertens who had taken his fourth stage win of the first week.
Return to Alpe d'Huez Stage 8 was another intermediate hilly stage through the Jura Mountains and was a repeat of the podium places from the previous day where yet again it was Gavazzi, Esclassan and Maertens who took the top places, except this time Esclassan got the win. Going into the first rest day the overall situation had Maertens in the maillot jaune by 2:04 over Pollentier, 3:16 over Kuiper, 3:23 over Jean-Pierre Danguillaume and 3:31 over Raymond Poulidor.
The contenders for the overall victory were thought to be Bernard Thévenet, Joop Zoetemelk and Lucien Van Impe, but all of them were about 4:00 off the lead. Indeed, they were waiting for the mountains to start their battle as the 1976 Tour was designed to be especially grueling with eight high mountain stages including three consecutive high mountain stages in the Alps, followed by a rest day and then four consecutive high mountain stages in the Pyrenees making for seven straight mountain stages which devastated the peloton leaving very few riders, and among them only the riders who excelled in climbing, in contention for the win by the time the final time trial came around in stage 17, followed by one last high mountain stage atop Puy-de-Dôme in stage 20. The first of these mountain stages finished at the mountain resort of Alpe d'Huez. None of the riders in the Tour had ever ridden this stage during the Tour as it had not been included since the 1952 Tour de France when the owner of a hotel in town brought a box of money to Tour organizers and asked them to bring the Grande Boucle to his mountain. History repeated itself to get the Tour to return to the Alpine resort but history would not repeat itself by waiting another quarter century to return to it, rather the legend of Alpe d'Huez was born.
By this point in the Tour many in the press were stunned by the commanding performance of Maertens, to the point that there was speculation among them that he could win the Tour. Even five time Tour champion Jacques Anquetil now thought he could do exactly what his countryman Eddy Merckx had done and win the title in his Tour debut. It was because of stages like this that his directeur sportif Lomme Driessens felt nervous about including the young rider in the Tour because a disastrous stage in the high mountains can have a devastating effect on the psyche of a young rider. Maertens felt he was ready for this however, as he and his friend Michel Pollentier had ridden Alpe d'Huez twenty times during the off-season to be sure he had mastered every one of the twenty-one hairpin turns. The directeur sportif for Van Impe was the young retired rider Cyrille Guimard, and Guimard together with his team captain Robert Mintkiewicz had suggested to Van Impe that he attacked right at the base of Alpe d'Huez and this is exactly what he intended to do. In fact, early in the stage Van Impe rode up alongside Maertens, smiled wryly, and told him he was going to attack at the foot of the Alpe. Maertens replied with a straight face saying nothing more than "I'm ready", because he knew that he was.